Maya Angelou, the multitalented storyteller known for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, died Wednesday at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86.

Angelou was best known as an author and a poet, but her career spanned the creative arts. She studied dance and drama as a child; performed in the opera Porgy and Bess; and recorded her first album, Calypso Lady, in 1957.

But it was as a writer that Angelou received her highest accolades. In 1993, she delivered President Bill Clinton's inaugural poem, "On the Pulse of Morning." In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom.

Angelou's work chronicled the black experience in the American South, drawing from Angelou's own experiences growing up poor in rural Arkansas. Writers across the nation and across the world count her as an inspiration; her contributions made a lasting mark on the fabric of American literature.

Even here in Miami, Angelou resonates. The author made her first appearance at the Miami Book Fair International in 1986. In 1995, she dedicated the Maya Angelou Elementary School in Allapattah, a school that places an emphasis on writing.

Ciara LaVelle is New Times' arts and culture editor. She earned her BS in journalism at Boston University, moved to Florida in 2004, and landed a job as a travel writer. For reasons that seemed sound at the time, she gave up her life of professional island-hopping to join New Times' staff in 2011. She left the paper in 2014 to start a family, but two years and two babies later, she returned in the hopes that someone on staff would agree to babysit. No takers yet.